am I being unreasonable to think she's an absolute ****

[ooominn]

This happened yesterday but I'm still so angry about it.

I asked my ex about a week ago if he was alright with me going to work Sunday night as overtime (not usually his night with the kids but he said it was fine). We don't speak much unless about the kids (7&9) so hadn't really said anything else about it.

Came to drop them off on the way last night and he wasn't in. Tried ringing he wasn't answering then got some rushed reply saying he was at work and he'd forgotten and that I should have reminded him.

His wife's car was on the drive and the lights were on so tried knocking and ringing her, firstly she pretended to not hear the door or miraculously any of our calls and then when I finally got hold of her she said ex hadn't mentioned anything and refused to have them.

I had to go home in the end and cancel my shift at short notice fucking over my boss and colleagues.

I'm so annoyed though and want to message her asking what kind of step mother would refuse to let her stepkids in when they were on the door step. My ex is a POS too in this situation I know but seriously why wouldn't you just agree to let them in for the night considering it was her husband who fucked up??

WIBU to message her? AIBU to be mad? Or is it just nothing to do with her as she said last night.

My ex said afterwards she was tired lol.

What did you not understand?

The selfishness and nastiness. It’s a disgraceful way to treat children regardless of whose “fault” it was. Human decency really seems to be dying out.

YANBU. They both were.

Your absolutely right, we don't know both sides and it appears that the ex has f**ked up here and should be shouldering blame.

Just for the record, if a step parent was any sort of parent to my kids I would absolutely respect their opinions on all of the scenarios you mentioned (although I guess easy to say as I'm not in the situation)
My stepdad has been an integral part of all of those things for me, even though I've always had a relationship with my real dad.

It's perfectly reasonable. There's no need for her to ever have to speak to anyone just because they are outside her door.

Holy shit, this place is weirder than weird at times.

Yes I’m sure when I finished my degrees and post degrees they where solely based on the amount of punctuation 🙄.

Me working with divorces probably has a lot to do with my opinion and working on the field or not I’m allowed one , specially as I’m a step mum myself and have a partner who is a stepdad to my children.
Like it or not roughly 30% of dads don’t see children from previous relationships and that number increases a lot after new children from new relationships come along . Those with new partners as above are normally out of their children’s life’s within a few years or they don’t play a relevant part in them and yes step mothers have a huge part in it .

The children's 'need' on this occasion was for someone to be responsible for their care. Their dad simply wasn't available (clearly his fault, no question about that), so the options are their DM or their SM (assuming noone else willing / asked / available at short notice).

Their SM didnt want to do it, for reasons unknown, their DM didn't want to do it because she wanted to go to work. Surely the children's actual mother is the one that has to take responsibility for meeting the children's needs?

Ah… yet more of holding women responsible for men’s inadequacies. Of course, it must be the new partners’ fault that these men choose not to see their children.

Clearly there’s no difference between correlation and causation. None at all.

Must be those bloody women that are the problem.

Yet freely able to make the choice to not take responsibility for stepchildren, whether anyone else thinks they’re wrong or not.

Presumably no one forced their actual parent to get remarried to a woman unwilling to be responsible for them, so the fact that he did doesn’t suggest that it’s something he considered to be a problem.

for all the talk of what she knew, HE knew he was marrying a woman that wasn’t mother to his existing children, so it should come as no surprise that the relationship she has with them does not require her to take on parental responsibility.

Apparently not.

Although, 70% of the poll (of over 1900 people) think the OP is unreasonable. So the very loud voices insisting that the SM is responsible and awful on the thread appear not to be hugely representative of what most people reading the OP think.

It is likely that lots of those people decided that it would be very sensible just not to engage with the angry ‘it’s their home how dare she deny them entry!’ crowd. Wise. Wiser than me. 🤣

Funnily enough, I’ve also worked on divorce cases and that’s why I have every sympathy for stepmothers. Unfortunately a lot of people do seem to think the role of a stepmother is to act as a de facto nanny for both parents, as well as a financier. They’re expected to be a third parent, yet at the same time remember they’re not a parent and never, ever assume the role of mother, lest you piss the actual mother off by stepping on her toes. Unless of course there are occasions where it’s convenient for the mother to have a substitute waiting in the wings, then stepmother needs to step up and do as she’s told.

Unlike you I'm not a lawyer by any means, but my dad married a cunt when my brother and I were children. She did everything to have us kicked out of the home and succeded, then told my dad he had to choose between "her or us", my dad choose her, so he abandoned us and went to have several children with this cunt. For twenty years we never heard from our dad until recently when he contacted me saying he had cancer and wanted to build a relationship with me. He felt remorse and guilt. As you can tell from this post my relationship with "stepmoms" is not a good one (to put it lightly). Her and my dad are both horrible people, so my heart goes to the OP's children who have to deal with such an unloving stepmother and a dad who "forgets" about his children. I really sympathise with those kids and hope mum gives them all the love & emotional support that they're never going to get from dad and his partner.

There's a bit of a difference with your experience through @Sandra1984 - you seem to be tarring this stepmum with the same brush even though what she's done is nowhere near the same as what your stepmum did.

I really hate this stepmum being called a c*. It's horrible. Stop being so abusive about situations where you don't know the full story (not specifically aimed at you, but at all the posters here who have used this word).

How is the SM unloving, because one evening, without notice, she refused to care for her SC?

That is the most far fetched conclusion I have seen on this thread.

And stop calling people cunts!
Misogynistic insults are positioning any of you well.

The issue isn’t ‘stepmoms’ it’s cunts. My step kids mother chose new husband over her kids once they were old enough to say ‘actually I’m not looking after your new kids when I have stuff to do’ especially given that they were never taken on holiday or even featured in any photos in their home. She kicked them out when they were no longer of any use practically or financially. That’s not an issue with mothers or step fathers, that’s an issue with people who are cunts.

@tiredofthiisshit21 I really hate this stepmum being called a c*. It's horrible. Stop being so abusive about situations where you don't know the full story (not specifically aimed at you, but at all the posters here who have used this word).

We don't know the full story of what really is going on with this broken family, we can only judge on a small incident the OP has presented to us, some people think stepmom's reaction is fine others not. Because I don't know the full story the "abandoned child" in me is clearly projecting herself and siding with the kids. I believe a lot of people on this thread have had to deal with horrible stepmothers (and horrible stepfathers!). Again: we don't know the full picture but I find this single incident the OP describes quite outrageous, but feel free to disagree with me. Personally I would have taken those kids, have them watch TV and be kind to them, then deal with my partner when he gets home and privately let him know he needs to get his act together with his ex-wife and children arrangements..

I’m not sure how refusing to provide last minute childcare is analogous to any of the above, but okay. Not wanting to be drawn into an argument on her doorstep does not mean the stepmother is unkind to the children when they visit their father. There’s a big difference between not acting as a mother figure, and being abusive.

If the stepmom was a "stepdad" I would call him a cunt too by the way.

I doubt it is the first time they had to listen to this kind of thing. They are probably used to it.

There seem to be 4 adults involved here. Two parents, two step parents.

For whatever reason Stepmum wasn't prepared to help. Both parents had got in a tangle, but OP says her partner would take the DC, so there's the answer. It seems he didn't for whatever reason but no one seems to be painting him the baddie.

Agree it’s his problem but as a step mother myself there’s absolutely no way I could have done that. When I married my husband I took on the responsibility of being a step mum. My step daughter is partly my responsibility too and I love her so why wouldn’t help out where I could. She’s a grown up now and we’re very close. She always tells me how much she appreciates me.

What has loving your DSC got to do with whether you’d babysit them without notice - the SM is hardly denying the children something they actively want is she?! (and if the DC would prefer to spend the evening with their SM instead of their own DM then what does that say about a) their mum and b) just how cold, cruel etc the SM must be towards her DSC).

Because nobody who cares about 2 young children, even a little bit, would have sat inside with the on the doorstep refusing to even answer the door.

Because nobody who cares about 2 young children, even a little bit, would have sat inside with the on the doorstep refusing to even answer the door.

Not if they were by themselves with no way of getting elsewhere, but very different when they're sat in their mum's car.

They were with their mother. Perfectly safe.

Perhaps she thought not opening the door was better for them than opening it and arguing with their mother in front of them.